Reclaiming History (178 page)

The only air-conditioning in the apartment was an old fan, and Lee would sit or lay bare naked in the suffocating summer heat, reading his books. Marina thought it was bad for Junie to see him naked, but he dismissed her concerns—the child was much too young. He often took baths with the baby that were really just long and loud sessions of play.
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There was one sinister novelty in their lives. One evening at the end of August Marina returned from a twilight stroll with June and found Lee on their screened-in side porch, kneeling on one knee, aiming his rifle into the street and working the bolt—dry firing. It was the first time she had seen him playing with his carbine since they moved to New Orleans. She was horrified.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Get the heck out of here,” he said. “Don’t talk to me. Get on about your own affairs.”

From then on she often heard him dry firing the rifle on the porch in the dark. He had fixed a lamp out there so that he could read in the evening, but he left it off when he was drilling with the rifle so the neighbors could not see him. Marina chided and even ridiculed him about it, but he was deadly serious: “If Fidel Castro needs defenders,” he told her, “I’m going to join an army of volunteers. I’m going to be a revolutionary.”

Marina did not make an issue of it. As far as she was concerned, he could do what he liked with his plaything as long as he did it at home—or in Cuba, for that matter. She made him promise that he would not take the rifle off to use against anyone in the United States.

“
Ya ne budu
[I won’t],” he would say in Russian. Marina let it drop.
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His neighbors would later say they noticed him always reading, either on the side porch or, through the front window, in the living room. Oswald stonily refused to talk with the neighbors. Even when they would pass each other on the sidewalk and the neighbors would bid him a good day, he’d look straight ahead without saying a word. It went beyond that. A. P. Eames, the neighbor who lived next door with his wife, said Oswald actually “projected a real hostile kind of feeling” as he passed by. About the only time the neighbors would see Marina was when she would go to a small neighborhood grocery. She, too, never said a word to any of them, only because she couldn’t speak English. But at least she was always friendly, always smiling to let them know she was acknowledging their presence. It was a tight little neighborhood where many people tried to beat the heat at night by sitting on their screened-in porches (which are very common in New Orleans to keep the mosquitoes at bay), and because Lee and Marina, speaking a foreign language, were different, some of the neighbors seemed almost to be keeping watch on them, noting their comings and goings and wondering about the loud arguments they couldn’t understand. “I used to hear him and her arguing at night,” Mrs. Garner, the landlady, would later recall, “and he would have her crying and the baby crying, and he would be speaking his foreign language. I couldn’t understand what he was saying.”
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The Oswalds had “very, very few visitors,” Mrs. Garner said.
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One was a “Latin type” who came to her door one evening and inquired for directions to the Oswalds’ apartment. He spoke with a Spanish accent and had some pro-Castro leaflets—undoubtedly Carlos Quiroga (see conspiracy section).
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The Garners had had an argument with Oswald about those leaflets. He had posted two pro-Castro signs on his screened porch, and Jesse Garner had to order him to remove them. Oswald wanted to know who objected to the signs, and Garner told him that he, Jesse Garner, did. Lee was to either take them down or vacate the apartment. It would hardly have been a loss to Garner. Lee was always late with the rent, though he paid in cash. Lee took the signs down.
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Although Oswald sought no social intercourse with his neighbors, he didn’t mind having a relationship with their garbage cans. The Oswalds didn’t have their own cans, and Mrs. Garner often saw Lee, late at night, come out of his apartment clad only in yellow trunks, shirtless, thongs on his feet, and watched as he worked his way up the street, stuffing his garbage in other people’s cans.
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Lee’s miserly ways now had a point: he would need every penny for the expenses to get to Cuba. He began the month of September, the Warren Commission would later conclude, with $182.21 cash in hand.
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His monthly rent of $65.00 was due on September 9, but he would end up not paying that or even for the two weeks he would remain in the apartment after the ninth. He would skip out on the utility bills too.
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With his unemployment compensation still flowing in, he would have more than enough money to finance his trip to Cuba. Nevertheless, he and Marina continued to fight over money. One night Lee “lent” her money to play poker with him, and she was absolutely exultant when she won, but Lee refused to pay up because he had lent her the money. He insisted they play another game, and, if she won that one, she could keep the money. If she lost, then she’d owe him again.

Marina exploded. “I’m sorry, Alka,” she said, “I see this game in real life every day, you’re always greedy for money. You know I don’t have a cent. Supposing I do owe you money, where will I get it? Steal it from you? You know I can’t steal.”

“Then you didn’t have to play by those principles.”

“I’m tired of your principles,” she said. “Even in games I see your petty spirit. I see it in the grocery store. We go in and you give me thirty cents. Afterwards, you want to know what I spent it on…You save on everything. What for? To buy a dress for your wife? Food or a toy for your child? No. You have money for a gun. You have money for your Mexico. But for your own baby, no! What joy is your Cuba, your Mexico, your Castro, to me? You never even think about our new baby. I have to ask Ruth to help because papa has got something more important on his mind. I’m tired of your ‘important’ things. When will you start to think the way normal people do? You imagine that you’re a great man. Nobody thought that up but you.” Marina’s grievances about his penny-pinching came pouring out of her in a way that stunned him into silence. Then she started packing her clothes in a suitcase. She would go stay with the Murrets until Ruth arrived on the twentieth.

He took her clothes out of the suitcase and returned them to the closets and drawers, and she took them out again and repacked them. Eventually she quieted down and went to bed. Lee retreated to the bathroom to read. When he did come to bed, she told him to go sleep on the floor, although she eventually relented on that too.
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The cause of the fight seems trivial enough, but it was probably sparked by the underlying and largely unspoken tensions between them. Marina, after all, was days away from the rupture, perhaps a final one, of her marriage. She knew that Lee was planning to dump her on Ruth Paine, whom he was counting on to cope with the trouble and expense of the birth of their second child. And he still threatened to send her and their children back to the USSR. The only chance that they would ever be reunited was that he might send for them if he succeeded in establishing himself in Cuba. With a resignation or wisdom uncommon in such a young woman—she was still only twenty-two—she realized that Lee would never be able to settle down until he got his Cuban fantasy out of his system. But apart from this, Lee, she was convinced, wanted only to be rid of her. Ruth was her only real hope of staying in America. Yet she clung to a hope that Lee might one day want his wife and children back again.
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Many have asked if Lee and Marina loved each other, and if so, what kind of love it was. I wouldn’t presume to know the answer except to observe that the opposite of love in any relationship is indifference, not hate, where at least some passion remains. And one thing that no one could ever say about Marina and Lee—they were not indifferent to each other.

O
n September 9, 1963, the New Orleans
Times-Picayune
reported on a September 7 interview Castro gave to an AP reporter in Havana. The headline on the article was “Castro Blasts Raids on Cuba; Says U.S. Leaders Imperiled by Aid to Rebels. Havana (AP).” The article read, “Prime Minister Fidel Castro said Saturday night ‘United States leaders’ would be in danger if they helped in any attempt to do away with leaders of Cuba. Bitterly denouncing what he called U.S.-prompted raids on Cuban territory, Castro said, ‘We are prepared to fight them and answer in kind. United States leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorists’ plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.’” The article said that Castro accused the United States of “double-crossing” policies and called President Kennedy a “cheap and crooked politician.”
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If, in Oswald’s mind, there ever was a time that Castro and his tender revolution needed him, it was now.

On September 17 Oswald visited the Mexican consulate in the Whitney Building in New Orleans and filled out an application for a tourist card. He described himself as a twenty-three-year-old, married, American-born “photographer” residing at 4907 Magazine Street. Giving in once again to his congenital lying, he put down 640 Rampart Street as his “business address” and said he was “Catholic.” Under the heading “Destination in Mexico” he wrote, “Transit tourist.” He would travel by bus, “$300.00” was listed as the approximate amount of money he was taking for the trip, and “10 days” was listed as the duration of the trip.
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Lee paid fifty cents for tourist card number 24085, valid for a single journey to Mexico for a period of fifteen days.
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A few days later, Thursday, September 19, Arnold Johnson, information director of the U.S. Communist Party, finally got around to answering Lee’s August 28 letter to the Central Committee
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and Oswald’s September 1 letter a few days later to Communist Party headquarters.
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Johnson’s letter to Lee was as meaningless as could be. As to the advice Lee sought, Johnson suggested he “remain in the background” in his FPCC activities, whatever that meant, and “not [go] underground.” And as to Lee moving to Baltimore, Johnson told Lee to “get in touch with us” once he arrived.
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At one point, any contact from the national office of the Communist Party would have been important to Lee, but now that he was headed for the big time in Cuba, Johnson’s letter was just another document he would put in his folder to establish his bonafides with the Cuban embassy in Mexico City.

On Friday afternoon, Marina went out to buy some groceries, and Ruth was waiting for her when she got back—September 20, exactly as promised. Lee was entertaining Ruth and her children on the porch in a way Ruth had never seen before. He was in high spirits. It was in marked contrast to her last visit, when she had driven Marina from Dallas to New Orleans. Then he had found fault with Marina constantly, as though he wanted only to rid himself of her.
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That first time she found the atmosphere so unpleasant she left, as previously noted, a day early. This time, however, she lingered through the weekend.
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It was a pleasant time, enlivened by the visit of Ruth Kloepfer. Kloepfer brought along her two college-age daughters. The one who had been studying Russian had recently visited Russia, and Lee played the gracious host, looking at her slides of Moscow, a few of which he recognized from his own trip there.
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Marina wanted to take Ruth Paine for another tour of the French Quarter, this time in the evening. Lee could not be prevailed upon to accompany them, so the two young women, with their three very small children, strolled along Bourbon Street, soaking up the special atmosphere of that storied street.

Back at Magazine Street, they found Lee to be in an unusually good mood. He had straightened up the apartment, washed the dishes, and started packing their things into and atop Ruth’s station wagon. Looking back, Ruth realized he had been “distinctly” eager to do the packing.
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He was probably trying to avoid having her handle, any more than she had to, the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, which he had disassembled, wrapped in a brown paper package, and tied up in a blanket.
*

Other than packing for the trip to Texas, it was a restful weekend, and the two women had plenty of opportunity to talk. But Ruth was never told about Lee’s plans to go to Cuba by way of Mexico. He had insisted to Marina that she not tell Ruth about this. Ruth had not even known, before she arrived, that Marina had decided to accept her invitation and that Marina and June would be returning to Dallas with her for Marina’s childbirth the next month. She could see that Lee was greatly relieved when she offered to take care of Marina and help ensure that Marina got good care at Parkland. Lee told Ruth that he was going to seek work in Houston or Philadelphia, and that he would leave as soon as Ruth and Marina were gone. He said when he got established there, he would send for Marina once she had given birth. Thus, Ruth thought Marina would be with her for only a brief period.
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Lee did tell Ruth about the fracas and his arrest when he was passing out pro-Cuba leaflets on the streets of New Orleans, and it was one of the few conversations she ever had with him in which he deigned to speak English.
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Mr. Garner, noticing Lee packing Ruth’s station wagon with his family’s personal belongings, approached Lee and asked him if he was moving, since Garner was concerned that Lee already owed about fifteen days’ rent. But Oswald reassured Garner that he was not leaving, saying that his wife was only going to Texas to have their baby, after which she was going to return to New Orleans.
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On Monday morning, September 23, Ruth and Marina were finally ready to leave.
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The car was severely overloaded with all of the Oswalds’ possessions added to Ruth’s, which included a boat on the roof rack, to which they attached a playpen, stroller, and other things. Lee kissed Marina tenderly, each struggling not to break down; Marina, knowing Lee was going to Cuba, tried to conceal from Ruth that she might be losing him forever. Lee watched as the car drove away, long enough to see that they made it no farther than a few blocks to a gas station—a tire was about to give out. He went down to the station and Marina took Lee a few steps away, and they kissed tenderly again. She told him to please be careful and take care of himself. “Stop,” he told her. “I can’t stand it. Do you want me to cry in front of Ruth?” Ruth bought a new tire and had it mounted. “This is sure going to cost a lot, isn’t it?” Lee said to Ruth. “Yes,” Ruth said, “but car owners have to expect that.” He did not offer to contribute anything to the trip financially. In fact, Ruth sensed that he didn’t even give Marina any spending money to take with her. But Ruth didn’t let it bother her. She knew that he had been unemployed for a long time and probably needed every cent he had to find a new job and rent a new apartment for them.
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Ruth’s attitude toward him had softened. When she had seen him kiss Marina good-bye very fondly, she felt that he really did care for his wife, and she recalled that he had told her not to tell anyone at Parkland that he had “abandoned her.”
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Ruth, Marina, and the kids made it to a motel that night just across the line in Texas, and arrived at Ruth’s home in Irving the next day.
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